Sunday, May 30, 2004

Yesterday Gill's world changed which means my world changed. She received her acceptance to Ryerson University's journalism program. This acceptance was not only based on her marks but on several articles she wrote for the Admitting Committee. She is ecstatic.

I asked if she was living my dream. (I worry about what I am unwittingly passing on to her - not the love but the negative things.) She said "no, this is my dream."

And so she will return from France before Rob and me, at the end of August, and move to Toronto. I feel a loss. I would have liked to go with her and help her find a place to settle.

I can't believe this tall slim beauty is leaving home and somehow the ache is more pronounced than the one I felt when she received her acceptance to University of Victoria.

Rob and I met at Ryerson in the Radio and Television Arts faculty. I left after a year when York University opened their theatre and dance program. I just calculated that we were there thirty-five years ago. I was one of two women in a class of 34. I do have some sweet memories and most aren't academic. I wonder how Gill will fare in "Toronto the Good." I am glad that she will have several of my sisters, my brother, and my parents close at hand if she should need help.

Funny how I felt so mature when I left home and although I know Gill is more sophisticated than I was, still she is my baby. (Oh cut out the maudlin stuff, Yvonne.)

This morning I had a plum meeting. Shirley is still in England becoming more worldly, so only three of us read and wrote, while listening to some young fellow, with a toque, play the piano and somehow music became entwined with the writing - predominantly in one of Wenda's pieces. We know we are fortunate to have each other to admire our work - even the truly shitty stuff (I'm talking of mine, naturally) - and to catch the mistakes in p.o.v. or time sequence or such - all the things that one misses when one has edited a story ten million times.

After the meeting, I had an hour with our accountant. Grrr... The government want still more money. Why can't we be taxed like the people of Hong Kong where whoever you are and no matter what you make, you pay 15% of your income - no play of favouritism. I think all the talk of dollars and sense left me uninspired. I'll close here.

Thursday, May 27, 2004

Okay, gotta blog. It's way overdue but what can I say? I've been busy doing important stuff like having my hair cut and streaked - doesn't look that different - a little shorter and more natural. That's what I like or that's what I'm like - short and natural. Oh, who cares? My conservative parsimonious side says ouch. "How many days did you work for this non-transformation? You're never going to turn heads, honey." (I say this with my cow-woman voice.) My sensible (yes I do have that side) says "You're not trying to turn heads. How ridiculous a thought at your age?"

Rob gave me a compliment the other night. Or is that "complement" Shirley? (I hope you're enjoying your time in good old England.) I'm not goin' tell what he said 'cause it would embarrass me but he's a good fellow, that man of mine - although don't think I'm getting presumptuous, calling him mine. He's his own person. There's no question of that in my mind.

Have I lost my mind? Maybe. Am I avoiding (I was goin' say voiding but that sounds rude) telling what I've really been up to? Yup. There's too little privacy in this world. I have my secrets but doesn't everyone?

I have been thinking a lot of water and fish symbols. I did a little research on the internet. Okay, everyone knows that Christ is often represented by a fish. But how many know that the fish symbol represented the pagan Great Mother Goddess. "It is the outline of her vulva." (Yes, I found this information online.) In China, Great Mother Kwan-yin is represented by a fish. In India, the Goddess Kali was called "fish-eyed one." In Egypt, Isis was called "The Great Fish of the Abyss." The fish symbol was so honoured in the Roman Empire that the Christians stole it and denied any reference to female genitalia.

I think of water as fluid, life-sustaining, liberating, and sensuous. I need to swim naked but our public pool doesn't allow it. Oh to be rich and have a private pool. I have little respect for money but if I were suddenly rich - a lottery win would do it - I would have a pool with water the temperature of bath water and I would swim in the morning and evening. How delicious a pipe-dream is that?

When I woke this morning, thinking of water, I remembered Antonio Machado's poem "Last Night, As I Was Sleeping" and the first stanza is about water! (Oh I know writers shouldn't use exclamation marks but I want to!)

"Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt--marvellous error!-- [I can't believe it!]
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?"

I worked last night from 7 to 11. This morning I found out that the French workshop, both sessions, are a go. I'm excited.

Amid all my secret activities, I've been reading Singer's "Boundaries of the Soul". She writes of life being divided into two halves. The first part "is directed toward emergence as an individual, earning a living, rearing a family, establishing a home" and the second part is "directed toward achieving harmony with the totality of being."

One passage that really resonates for me at the moment reads:

"[T]he ancient Hebrews were told to rejoice when death comes to a friend, and to mourn at a birth - for it is a fearsome thing to send a ship forth on a voyage to an unknown destination, but a glad welcome is due when the ship returns at last to its home port."

My mother once told me, with a straight face, that life is not supposed to be fun. I think it is supposed to be fun. I will tell my daughter and sons that life is not supposed to be easy but, now that I think of it, I think they all know this already.

Oh dear, it's scary outside. The rain is pounding on my roof and it's starting to thunder. I'm afraid of thunder and lightening.

Time to go inside to the big house.

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Yesterday was lovely. A radiant sunny day.

I wrote like crazy early morning down by the water. So many thoughts roaming my brain but I don't have time to write at length now. Clare arrives in half an hour and we need to talk. She leaves for France on Thursday.

I had a massage after my writing binge and then Gill and I meandered through the streets of West Van until we reached Park Royal where I bought underwear. Red.


But what I really want to tell is that I just heard from my sister Gael. They removed all the cancer in the orange. It has not spread to the lymph nodes. I am so relieved that tears are running down my face.

Saturday, May 22, 2004

For reasons I will explain in a minute, I had to find my copy of "Leaving My Father's House" by Marion Woodman. I must have lent it. I went to the library and the one copy was in. I quote from Woodman's conclusion:

"Mothers and grandmothers for generations have despised their female bodies, their sexuality, "the curse" of menstruation. They were born in a female body; nothing can change that. No matter how hard they try, they feel they have failed from the start. Their contempt for their own matter is in their cells and that contempt is in the cells of their daughters. "I don't deserve to live" is blurted out as the bottom line of self-rejection."

Several paragraphs later:

"They [women] feel so betrayed by their body that they try to take up residence in their mind.... Numbness makes life bearable. To obliterate matter, however, is also to obliterate soul.... Life cannot be fully lived without embodiment, nor can death be faced creatively. No wonder death is denied in a culture that rejects the beauty of its own humanity.
As the psyche individuates so does the body, and the physical illnesses we encounter in the process make quite clear that our body cells do have their own wisdom, which they want to transform into light (consciousness)."

Strange how some writer's ideas stay with me. Stranger still that when I want the words I know almost the exact page of the book where I read them.

I realized a few years ago that the women in my family - specifically my mother and sisters including myself are masters of self-rejection and most likely come from a long line of females who do not value themselves. My father proudly says that his mother would rather have starved herself than see her children go out in public poorly dressed. This poor woman, twenty-five years younger than her husband, died of colon cancer in her fifties. One of her daughters died of the same disease.

I never knew either of them. Cancer, I thought, is passed maternally.

I found out last night that my sister Gael had a lump the size of an orange removed from one breast last week. The doctors think it may have moved into her lymph nodes. She will know in a few days.

I telephoned Gael this morning. Until the call, I felt bad for her but since the call I feel this ache - it's hard to describe - a hopelessness. She said that she didn't tell anyone because she didn't want them to worry and then, she paused. "The real reason is I thought no one would care and then make light of it - especially mum and dad.

She was surprised that they cried. This is so sad, beyond sad. She said she does too much, carries too much tension, too much angst. (She is a politician and is always running somewhere, helping someone.) She believes she brought the cancer on herself.

Leslie thought the same thing.

The trouble is that I know how horrible this disease is. I drove Les to numerous chemo and radiation treatments. I sat through doctors and specialists' appointments with her. I saw her hair fall out by the handful. But the worst times were when she could say nothing, when she would rock back and forth in pain.

Isn't it sad that the least painful part - losing one's hair - is the most difficult to bear?

Gael is scared. She has already had her hair cut short.

She is my parents' fourth daughter, the "pretty one", and the one who felt she had to prove she has a brain in her head. She worked as a correctional officer in prisons before becoming a municipal councillor. She has been more successful than any of her sisters in earning her own living. She has two daughters in their twenties. She paid for their university educations.

She hasn't been able to work this past week. She says there is no excuse. She feels fine. Instead, she keeps cleaning her house.

People from work keep calling, asking why she isn't at this or that committee meeting. So she told them why. She says that over 500 people know what she is going through. (For this reason, I feel I can write about her dis-ease.) She is surprised by all the telephone calls she is receiving, expressing concern.

She didn't know that so many cared. This breaks my heart.

We five Wetherall sisters are all so different and yet so similar. Rob's sister once said that it is difficult to be in a room with us when we are together. We are so powerful. Strange. I don't think any of us feel powerful.

But perhaps we are in ways I am just beginning to see.

We do not want to be victims. Should I say "I do not want to be a victim? No. I doubt anyone wants to be a victim. Alden Nowlan's poem comes to mind:

It's want we all want, in the end,
to be held, merely to be held,
to be kissed (not necessarily with the lips,
for every touching is a kind of kiss).

Yes, it's what we all want, in the end,
not to be worshipped, not to be admired,
not to be famous, not to be feared,
not even to be loved, but simply to be held.

Another passage in "Leaving My Father's House" resonated with me: "Crucial to the breaking of incestuous bonds to the parents is the recognition that we do not belong to them and they do not belong to us. Individuation begins with the painful recognition that we are all orphans. And the liberating recognition that the whole of the world is our orphanage."

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Brendan asked me about my blog last night, said that I had left me depressed in the last one. Guilt sweet guilt. Sometimes I have the energy to expose myself in all my unsavouriness and at other times, I don't.

Why am I writing this public journal anyway? Am I writing to one particular person? No. But from time to time, I am thinking of an individual, telling what I can not to that person because he or she is not near.

A good example is Rob. We see each other for around five minutes a day during the week and the past weekend days and nights, I have been out at work or meetings. Besides it's impossible to catch up after so much time apart. Rob called me a day after my last entry and said that I sounded down. (An understatement.) I was surprised and pleased that he called and I admit a little ticked that he wouldn't have seen that I was low and not myself - or maybe I was myself - even though I knew this thought was unfair. He's working too long hours and hardly catches enough sleep.

Usually I don't dare contemplate my readers or I would edit myself. I believe myself, in person, to be miserly. I give whole-heartedly to those who are open and forthright with me but not to others who keep to themselves. This journal allows me to be forthright with everyone who cares to know how I am and doesn't hope for a "fine, thankyou" - the acceptable response of my childhood.

At times last week I felt like a confused, bereaved child. There was too much pain to bare and bear. Firstly, the death of a beautiful young man and the grief of his mother, father, and friends. And then the world news - so horrendous, I couldn't think about the heinous mutilation and other inhuman acts. How can such things happen in the so-called civilized world? Someone said that they have always gone on. Is it any wonder that one falls into inconsolable grief with all the monsters from within and without?

And then I hear from one or more people via email or in person and I am overwhelmed by their generosity of spirit and kindness. I become lighter.

Yesterday morning, I received an email from Vaughan. One of her poems has been accepted by "A Room of Her Own" - a particularly fine literary magazine. I know she's an amazing writer, even tell her so, but it's wonderful when someone in the publishing world recognizes her talent.

In the afternoon, Gill called me at work to tell me that she's been accepted at University of Victoria and better still, she can start in January. Now she can weave her plans to go to Europe, live in Paris for some months, and then return to find an apartment in Victoria and go to university. She's excited. So am I.

After a festive nicoise salad that Gill prepared for dinner to celebrate, I went outside to continue trimming the ivy that runs the length of the fence outside our front door, at the request of our neighbour. It was blocking her light. I had just started clipping when Bren came out and took over. I was surprised at the help and pleased. Where did this tall, thoughtful young man come from? I feel as if he's a gift, returning home at exactly the right time.

Later, he drove me over to Helen's to celebrate Double Dave's 41st birthday. This big booming sweetheart of a man is content with his life, his cottage, that is owned and cared for by the nursery next door. The back garden is enchanted with its huge magnolia tree and many varieties of flowering bushes and plants. Dave wants to have a party in June for all his friends and their friends.

Before beginning this blog, I read a chapter in "Looking for Gold: A Year in Jungian Analysis." The author, Susan Tiberghien is a writer and begins each chapter with a dream. The one I've just finished is about a cat who walks in the door - this happens in the dream and a few days later, in reality. I'm learning that there are universal symbols. "the cat refers to the close relationship between - the anima and man's capacity to create art and to enter into the world of imagination." Tiberghien comes to the conclusion that she can not force her creativity. She "can only let it open the door on its own, like the cat... " She also mentions Brenda Ueland, who I quoted lately and even uses the same quote: "imagination needs moodling - long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering."

I think I'm being hit over the head with a baseball bat.

Friday, May 14, 2004

I am miserable beyond reason today and so I decided that I would not write my blog. And then I began reading Susan Tiberghein's "Looking for Gold" and I read the following passage: "Is this peculiar to the woman writer? How many of us conceal, consciously or unconsciously, our pain, our suffering, our despair?"

The idea that I have not a reason in the world to be unhappy, that I am so privileged, makes me despair more. I've been writing on and off in my journal all day. I began this morning with "I am so forlorn. I can't think or feel. I want to cry but can't. I feel so small, so self-centred (and even though I remembered Marlene's words - something to the effect that where else can we be centred but in ourselves, I wasn't consoled.)"

I continued: "I am a stupid writer. Oh I'm a writer that's what I do with myself most of the time but I'm selfish and I'm small and I don't know what to do with all these damn words."

I keep thinking of betrayal in writing and it's wearing me down. What if by not betraying another, one betrays oneself?

Betrayal is a writer's nightmare. What if she or he describes an intimate moment with another because it may help someone else not feel so alone or for some such reason (if the writer is arrogant enough to allow her or him self such a grandiose thought) and in so doing, hurts another? Should she or he keep her/his big mouth shut? Or should one pretend the intimate moment is fiction, that it was created by a vivid imagination, or an idea grasped from the collective unconscious and not personal experience? I so admire Nancy Mairs and her family who give her permission to describe such intimate moments and publish them as non-fiction.

Early this morning, I threw on a dress and trousers and then an old sweater - looked like a bag lady - and went down to the water and sat with a coffee. I wrote: "I am so damn lonely. I sit down at the beach because I need the sound of the water to calm me. I have so much to say that I'm afraid to share. And the image of a young man, dead in a car crash, keeps invading my thoughts. I didn't know the young man. I have only heard of him through the concerned words of his mother. I am so distressed. It hits close to home. I keep thinking of the night my car crashed. What if my son and I hadn't been able to walk away? What if he had been hurt worse? I can't bear the thought. How does one heal such a wound?

I read Shirley's and Kate's live journals to catch up on their lives and Kate mentioned my "good energy." I nearly cried.

When I am negative about myself, some of my friends think I am asking for bolstering. This is not the case. I simply want to describe my life.

I still can't figure how why I feel so forlorn. Can someone hit me on the head with a baseball bat?

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

My quiet neighbourhood is noisy today. Two huge monster houses are being constructed across the street. (Rob says good. It can only raise the price of ours.) And a couple of doors down, a huge tree is being removed. I think of Vaughan and the loss of trees near her home.

I returned last night from my writing retreat at Whistler. Alas, Shirley didn't make it. Her cold lingered but she will next time. Wenda, Vaughan, and I settled Sunday evening into my sister's luxurious duplex and wrote morning and night - alone and together - and ate. Oh mon dieu, how we ate - quiche, cheese scones, salad, chicken in wine sauce, brown rice, asparagus, strawberries, yogurt - oops, cheese and crackers, popcorn, bananas, apples - I feel as if I never stopped. Such abundance. At times like this I feel so privileged.

The drive home was not only glorious - sky bright, sun hot - but fun. We stopped at Britannia Beach for lattes and spoke once again about betrayal in writing. It is impossible not to add fact to fiction when writing (including those we love in our stories) or there would be little depth so we had a hilarious time dreaming up pseudonyms and then decided to take Gill's lead and shop at Value Village for a wardrobe to match our undercover names.

Home sweet home. But when I checked my emails, I found one from Maureen, a cheery bubbly generous soul who attended the workshop in France. Her son was killed in an auto crash last week. I can't begin to imagine her pain. It also reminded me how lucky Mike and I were to walk away when my car was totaled at the end of January.

Today is too busy - store meeting, doctor and dentist appointments are only the beginning but there will be a half hour here and there to write. My life would be so lonely without a pen and paper.

Sunday, May 09, 2004

It's Mother's Day and all my children (Mike for the night) are back at home, sleeping soundly. and will take me out for breakfast. Brendan and Mike presented me with a glorious bouquet of tulips last night - mostly white with a splattering of orange flame.

I tried, by phone, to reach my mother this morning. Strange when Vaughan called me a "mom" yesterday, I noted that my mother always signs herself "mum", the Northern Irish way, and my writer's brain thought "mummies". The women in my mother's family have always been mum. I looked up the definition on my online dictionary:
Entry: dumb
Function: adjective
Definition: voiceless
Synonym: impaired, inarticulate, incoherent, mousy, mum, mute, quiet, silent, soundless, speechless, tongue-tied, uncommunicative, wordless

I see that, through my writing, I have broken the chain.

After breakfast, I will work and then leave for Whistler early evening for a writing retreat. My Plum group will join me although Shirley is sniffling and may not be able to come. Damn it. We don't often have the luxury of time to write and read so I'm hoping for a miracle recovery.

Yesterday, I left the house early - before 7:30 a.m. - to meet my friend, Lynn for coffee and then to work until four when Marlene picked me up at the store with Ursula who has just arrived for a quick visit from Toronto. She will assist Marlene with the movement part of the body/soul writing in France this summer. She is lovely. I liked her immediately. We drove down to Horseshoe Bay, met Bett, and had dinner at Trolls and discussed France. The only problem is that UBC mailed the flyers late and we still don't know if there will be sufficient registration to run both sessions. It's difficult to book air travel, let alone arrange housing for the participants until we have an exact number.

I just realized that in approximately two months, Rob, Gill, and I will be flying to France. Time escapes me. I have to start planning.

As I will be away for a few days, without internet connection, I will return to this blog Tuesday night or Wednesday.

Friday, May 07, 2004

I'm down at the water after a rich day.

This morning I spoke to Kate in Germany who recently had her first ever cover story printed - see Kate's story on seal hunting. She's living in a foreign country, speaking a new language, teaching school, writing fast and furious, raising a toddler, living with a Bulgarian; and thinks she isn't doing enough. She is beautiful, sexy, compassionate, more than generous with friends and family and I know, without doubt, that she will be famous some day. Perhaps, she'd prefer rich. (Kate, if you read this, see yourself through another's eyes.)

After speaking with Kate, I received a phone call from Helene in France - another amazing woman - who assured me that she can accommodate several writers during the workshop this summer.

After this call, I drove to Coquitlam for an easy lunch at a small cafe with Clare who has just recovered from breast cancer. After lunch, we drove to Lake Como and read our latest work to each other. Clare is a fine poet who doesn't know her worth. She has written me into a poem as "a friend who dances on tables." Why does this please me?

Now I sit scribbling down by the water thinking of last night and the last Jungian meeting of the session at Marlene's - yet another amazing woman. (Sometimes, when I allow myself, I think that I must be doing something right to have such friends.)

We listened to Marion Woodman's raspy voice for half an hour and then Marlene lead us through the last chapter of "Addiction to Perfection". Woodman has called this chapter "The Ravished Bride" and Marlene explained, in reponse to a question, that when a woman is in touch with her sexuality, her animal body, the whole world is erotic. I love eroticism - even worked my way through Georges Bataille's treatise on the subject.

I adore Woodman but she isn't easy to digest. Now I don't worry about understanding every word and passage, and following her thread: I simply read and then underline what resonates for me. For instance?

"Science attempts to understand nature but too often its methods are rape and exploitation. The feminine way is very different. Through the opening of the feminine, love can enter, thereby bringing with it awareness of what von Franz calls "the star" - the uniqueness of the individual in eternity. Only through the feminine can creation complete itself in consciousness."

"The addiction to perfection is an addiction to unreality which leaves little room for the feminine."

And I loved this passage: "If the woman waits, stops trying, and in response to the masculine allows the feminine energy to come in, then the mystery happens to her. Then having experienced masculinity, she redirects that into action. Sexual intercourse is like conversation. [yes] The feminine listens and responds; the masculine translates what is heard. The process requires the full recognition of one by the other."

And as one woman said, the whole book can be summed up by one sentence in this chapter: "To strive for perfection is to kill love because perfection does not recognize humanity."

During the writing session, I responded to the question "What is the treasure that I want to bring back after the reading of this book?"

I want to remember, in my simple words, that "imperfection is the richest state, the most human - facing the negative mother in myself, the stern Irish matriarch, and saying 'yup, you're right. I don't make your grade. It doesn't matter any more.'"

Wednesday, May 05, 2004

I have been madly cleaning up paper clutter since 5 a.m. because yesterday I couldn't find the receipts I need for ICBC. I still haven't found them but I have yet to attack office and I'm feeling more organized in my writing house. And the kitchen is literally clear of paper.

My meeting with the corporation's adjustor yesterday went well. Although I did become emotional at times, I was able to ask sensible questions and received, what I believe, were honest answers. I told her at the beginning of the meeting that I wanted a few days to digest what was said. She said she pushed as hard as she could for a 25/75 liability decision in my favour - even presented similar case studies - but she couldn't do it. The thing is that I should have waited until the light turned red to start my turn unless there was a sign from the other driver that he was going to stop. They know he was speeding from the condition of the vehicles. They know the light was amber as there was a witness but this witness said that he was surprised that I made the turn given the speed of the other vehicle. I am surprised that he said this as I believe myself to be an over cautious driver. I have never caused an accident and have never received a speeding ticket in my over thirty years of driving so what happened that night? An amber light lasts 3.5 seconds, according to the adjustor.

What the fifty/fifty split means is that I lose completely my safe driving category and this accident will cost me $2500 over the next three years. Because I was injured and had numerous doctor's appointments after the accident, ICBC will give me $2500 (which is half of what I would receive if I was not at fault.)

The young man, who I insist, caused the accident is contesting the 50/50 split. He says that the light was green. He could not have been watching the light nor could he have been watching my jetta start to turn.

So what do I do? I'm going to talk this through with a lawyer friend and then decide.

Tuesday, May 04, 2004

I woke up fragmented after sleeping nine hours, remembering bits and pieces of a bizarre dream with flying carpets and a huge fish bowl, full of tropical fish.

Today I go to view some sweaters with Sherry for the store and then to meet my ICBC adjustor. I still can't decide whether to fight their decision or not. I know that I am not responsible for the accident but I don't know if I can prove it and, more to the point, whether I want to spend my psyche energy on the battle. I intend to try and keep my calm, ask questions - sensible ones - that will help me decide.

Last night we received notice of the graduation ceremony and banquet. The "girls and boys" are told what to wear. "Jeans are not acceptable under gowns."
At the banquet dinner, priced at $85 a head for a buffet, there will be a "mocktail hour" where one can drink soft drinks and chatter and photograph the children. At the door to the banquet, there will be a security check and once inside one cannot leave and return. Grad families are not allowed to rent a room in the hotel. No wine will be served with the meal.

I'm ticked off, not because of the security and lack of a civilized glass of wine at dinner but because I should have joined the grad committee and protested such hypocrisies and restraints. This rite of passage event was celebrated in the same way when our sons graduated. The highlight of both evenings was watching the young men and women arrive in their limos looking gloriously grown up and beautiful and having the first dance with Brendan in his black tuxedo and with Mike in his gold-sequined one. This year Rob will dance with Gill, in her sweeping black ballgown. I almost get weepy thinking about it.

I must shower and start my day. Wish me courage. Situations where I must stand up for myself and fight are more than difficult.

Sunday, May 02, 2004

Oh dear, I've been procrastinating about writing this blog. My days have been spent with thoughts not ready for public consumption. I've also been fixated on a story that refuses every ending I give it.

Damn it all. I hate fighting myself - reminds me of some lines by Rainer Maria Rilke (for some time I thought him a woman).

"What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great...
When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us."

I'm frustrated also by ICBC. I had a call Friday from my adjuster. The final decision is that I am fifty percent responsible for the car accident. The gist of their argument is that even though the young man was doing 9 km over the speed limit (as much as they can be certain), and ran an amber light, I should have waited - even though he was breaking the law that states one must stop for an amber light unless it is unsafe to do so - because most people break this law.

The question I ask myself is it worth my time and energy to fight the decision and, more to the point, do I have a chance of winning when it's taken them three months to come to this decision?

I will sleep on it.